Tag presidential candidates

Whew! The 2016 USA presidential campaign has been exhausting to think about, to discuss, and goodness knows to imagine that Trump wins. And he can win. Why he can or cannot win has been the subject of many news program discussions, and most that I have seen just miss the point. No, better said, most are in denial about what a large segment of the American population is willing to believe, say, and vote for. When I hear the denial, it usually manifest itself as a question, “Who believes such a thing?”

It is clear to me that about 35-40% of the American public believes in Trump’s principle—I am better off surrounded by people like me. Read more

Well, well. As a well-traveled black male, I’ve know the US environment, no the global environment, to have prejudice and bias. Not life threating hatred, but some. I believe, all humans utilize biases–The human brain works quite efficiently with biases (a topic worthy of a blog post by itself).

My key learning from the article is that sufficient racial integration has not occurred such that a broad base of Americans, see, Americans with racial differences as one of them. If the article would have reported on the racial prejudice of Black people, I suspect there would be no progress. My life experience certainly echoes the percentages quoted in the article.

As I reflect on the article, I remember the discussion Barack Obama made after the wide display of the Rev. Wright sermons. One telling point he made, “America has not integrated its churches.” Maybe that is the true evidence of integration, religious worship. The American society has focused integration efforts on schools, employment, housing and with the Affordable Care Act, health care. Maybe, just maybe, its time to effectively integrate religious worship. Now, that is a challenge.

October 5, 2012

Well, well. Mitt Romney has confirmed my beliefs. The NPR article confirms, for me, so much. Admittedly, I may be using isolated events to confirm preconceived biases. But, when I connect the dots from the August post I made, below, it’s hard to believe “isolated” is an appropriate adjective.

August 26, 2012

Wow, The Economist really laid into Mitt Romney in this article. I think their tone and questions are legitimate. However, in my mind, the answer to the title question is obvious: Mitt believes it would be great to be president.

All other thoughts are simply a means to an ends for Mitt. What most of us call flip flopping for Mitt appears to be simply how he gets what he wants. Fame, to be liked, power, and status they have driven this guy for a long time, nothing new now.

Mitt is pretty obvious, we just don’t want to believe he has the audacity to ask for our vote only by promising to make himself better off–but he has.

I read a recent Reuters article with a tiring level of interest. I’m past curiosity, and desire a summer break, before the fall election campaign. The fact that states, at this late date are still discussed in terms of favorable to one candidate or the other, suggest the divisions are not healing. Read more

The two party system seems to be at one of its weaker moments. Both the democratic and republican parties are, in reality, collections of sub-groups. Democrats contain, environmentalist, union advocates, social engineers, and ardent civil rights protectors. Republicans, to hear the broad media descriptions, contain fiscally conscience free enterprise advocates, evangelical protestants, and libertarians. Broken in today’s republican movement, is the inability to hold a debate, recognize and value the input of the subgroups, and then coalesce around shared values, namely a primary process that moves from debates to galvanization—What I see is a lack of shared values. Read more

What does it mean for a nation to be at war? Engagement in armed conflict is an obvious descriptor, but not every military action is war. To distinguish between military actions, knowing the objective, becomes necessary. Using the national guard to settle the chaos after Hurricane Katrina, for example, was not a war. War, then, accomplishes distinct objectives for the winner. Two objectives dominate my thinking: Read more

Occasionally, I spend my leisure time in the most unexpected of ways. Most people do not relax by reading healthcare plans from four of the leading Democratic Presidential Candidates. But I did. For political balance, I reviewed Chapter Four, Improving Incentives in Health Care Spending, of the 2006 Economic Report to the President. Rational balance was provided courtesy of the famed consulting firm, McKinsey & Company, through its article, Universal Principles of Health Care Reform, published in the first quarter of 2007. As my review concluded I asked myself, are these political proposals of consequence? Read more

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